


The Start Of All Things That Are Left To Do

by LittlePageAndBird



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Darillium (Doctor Who), Domestic, F/M, Fluff and Angst, I Love You, Love, So Married, Vulnerability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21985861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittlePageAndBird/pseuds/LittlePageAndBird
Summary: “What are you afraid of?”He asked as gently as he could, but it didn’t stop River glaring at him like he’d as good as smacked her across the face. “I’m not afraid. My love defines me. It’s what stands between who I am and who the Silence wanted me to be. It’s my freedom, it’s my - purpose-”“Then let someone give it back.”“No.”
Relationships: The Doctor/River Song, Twelfth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 15
Kudos: 128





	The Start Of All Things That Are Left To Do

**Author's Note:**

> On Darillium, a couple of hours after the end of Husbands.  
> Title from Hozier’s Wasteland, Baby.

The moment they finished dessert on the balcony he all but pulled River into the Tardis, ignoring her suggestive remarks in favour of promising her one last Christmas present (which incidentally did very little to curb the suggestive remarks).

“Drinking and driving, Doctor?” His wife raised an eyebrow as he hopped up to the console. “You can barely drive.”

“I had one glass!” he protested. “You finished the bottle.”

“Of the most expensive wine in the galaxy? It would have been rude not to. Especially as my date picked up the bill.” She smirked, leaning over his shoulder to pull the handbrake before he could reach it. “Although given that said date stole the universe’s most valuable diamond from my cleavage, I should imagine he could spare the cash.”

“I didn’t _steal_ it from - off!” He slapped River’s hand away from the buttons and she held it to her chest, feigning shock.

“Rude. Wine or no wine, I’d still fly circles around you, darling.” 

“It’s just a short hop.”

She relented with a huff at his insistence, watching with folded arms as he zipped around the controls. “Where are we going?”

He smiled as the rotor whirred to life. “You’ll see.”

His wife narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re being mysterious.”

“Do you like it?”

“No.”

He threw back the playful glare she gave him which melted into a grin as they landed, steering her to the doors with a hand at the small of her back and a breath held in his lungs.

He’d landed them perfectly - just outside a picket fence, encasing a small stone cottage with a blue front door. It stood on a meadowy cliff’s edge peppered with trees, the Towers looming behind it and the restaurant a bright buzzing spot in the distance. 

“This is beautiful,” River remarked lightly. “Whose is it?”

He switched his weight from foot to foot, biting his lip. “Ours.”

“Ours? For what?” she asked absent-mindedly.

His eyes darted between her and the house, wondering if she’d hit her head a little harder than he’d thought. “For… living in?”

“For…” She turned back to him slowly, eyes blown wide. “You got us a house?”

He nodded, unable to stop a grin wrinkling his nose. “Happy Christmas.”

“Why did you do that?” she breathed.

He snorted. “Well, we have to live somewhere. Thought it would do to have somewhere a bit more permanent than the Tardis.”

River stood rooted to the spot, looking faintly shell-shocked. “Doctor, were you… you were actually thinking of staying here for... the whole twenty-four years?” 

“You - _what_?” He gawked at her, half-hoping she would burst out laughing. She didn’t. “Of course I - what else did you think?”

“I don’t know, I - I assumed it was part of the whole…” She gestured at the monoliths behind them. “Towers and music schtick.”

“ _Schtick_ -”

“You know - symbolic!”

“I _said_ twenty-four years!”

“You said the _night_ lasted twenty-four years - nothing about staying here for all of it.”

“It was implied!” he spluttered, incredulous.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She laughed suddenly. “You can’t stay here for two decades, you silly man.”

“Why can’t I?”

“Oh, Doctor. You can barely sit still for five minutes - you think you can do this?” She pointed a finger at the perfect little house he’d been so proud of until precisely now, her smile far too bright to fool him. A gust of wind sent the thrum of the Towers into a crescendo that drove a shiver up his neck.

“If I did,” he said softly. “Would you stay with me?”

She huffed impatiently. “Of course I would, but -”

“But what?”

“But it doesn’t matter what I want, does it?”

He sighed, taking the newly cut key from his pocket and throwing it to her. “Go inside.”

River caught it in her hand, turning it over in her palm as she studied him. “But-”

“Just do it. Please.”

He waited until she’d wandered down the cobblestone path and disappeared inside the cottage before he followed her, mouth full of his hearts. 

She was standing uselessly in the almost-darkness when he caught up with her, the dawning twilight through the windows all that allowed him to pick out her silhouette. He ducked around her to turn the lights on, saving the oversized Christmas tree in the corner until last, so that she could see all of it. The painting above the fireplace that she’d eyed up in one of the universe’s most prestigious art galleries, the one he’d spent the rest of their visit coaxing her out of various plans to steal. The shelf crammed full of the artefacts she’d dug up with her own hands and stuffed under her bed in Stormcage when he’d turned his nose up at her patient thievery. The faded photographs of her parents propped up in frames on the windowsill. 

His hearts swelled at the sight of River. He’d only had a few hours, scribbling out floor plans while she’d lain out cold on the Tardis floor and passing them on to the builders, along with a list of coordinates on where to find all the things to fill it - all the things that would make it hers. Every time without fail that he’d checked up on it during the four-year wait for the balcony, to make sure it was perfect and to add finishing touches unearthed from deep in the Tardis, he had indulged himself in imagining her here. Digging with that ridiculous trowel in their garden, reading in their bathtub, curled up on their sofa in his hoodie, gloriously rumpled by sleep in their bed. But he’d imagined this moment most of all, her first moments in their first home.

Saying that, he’d sort of imagined her looking a bit happier.

She wandered out of his sight without a word, past all the things he’d expected would steal her breath away without so much as a backward glance, and he listened to the opening and closing of doors as she slipped between rooms. He flicked invisible dust from the mantelpiece and fluffed the cushions and straightened the tassels on the rug out with his toes until he couldn’t find anything else stopping him from going after her.

Slaloming from room to room, a small bubble of panic pressed on his throat. She wasn’t there.

“River?”

A biting breeze stung his skin, and he followed it until he found the back door swinging on its hinges. She was sitting just over the threshold, a shadow against the last embers of sunset, looking very small. 

He perched next to her on the back step, overlooking the garden with the gravel path and the loveseat and the little pond. She stared at an unfixed point on the horizon, eyes glazed over and fingernails ticking a heartbeat rhythm against her palm. 

“It’s bloody cold,” she muttered into the uneasy silence.

“Yeah. Didn’t really think through the whole permanent night thing,” he admitted, slipping his suit jacket off and draping it around her shoulders. “I’m afraid it’ll only get colder over the next twenty-four years.”

He felt her tense at his pointed words, her eyes snapping up to his. 

“You should probably buy some jumpers.” He smiled, hesitant. She looked back at him like he was speaking a language she couldn’t understand. “But the house should keep us nice and warm. There’s a log fire in the living room that’s-”

“I know.” 

Her eyes glistened as they swivelled away, resolutely looking anywhere but him. Acutely aware that something seemed to have broken inside her, words stumbled out of him in a panic. “We can change it. If there’s anything you don’t like. Hell - tear it to the ground and start again if that’s what you want.”

“No, sweetheart,” she said finally, her voice directed at the gravel beneath their feet. “It’s perfect.”

He felt himself sag with relief. “You think so?”

“I do.” She nudged his shoulder with hers, a little gesture of reassurance. “I’m just... feeling a lot.” 

He chuckled softly, wondering not the for the first time if his rusty old hearts would slow to their usual pace at some point in the next two decades or they’d simply have to get used to the thrill of her. “You and me both.”

River swallowed heavily, unsmiling. “I’ve been trying very hard not to feel anything lately.”

His mind flickered back to the ship, the moment of burning fury that had blazed in her eyes as Flemming had read the latest entry of her diary like it was merely words. “How long has it been since Manhattan?”

“A couple of months.”

He winced at the pain stringing her words tight. “Not long.”

“I’ve been keeping busy,” she muttered, eyes fixed mechanically ahead.

He hummed, casting his eyes back to the gentle glow of their house. “It might be good for you to stop now.”

“How?” she asked faintly. “Two hundred years, a whole universe - only three people have ever mattered to me. And two of them are gone.” She took a deep, shuddering breath that made wisps of fog in the night air. “Of course I expected it. I suppose almost everyone expects to lose their parents. But I didn’t expect it to feel like this.” Her forehead puckered. “Like someone reached inside me and ripped something out. And I can’t ever get it back.”

She turned to look at him, cheeks reddened by the cold. “It’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it?”

He nodded. She searched his eyes, lost. “How did you do this?”

“Them.” He found himself smiling at the echo of her mother’s voice in his head. “I took the memory of them with me. I still keep it, everywhere I go.” He swept his thumb across her cheek briefly. “They might be gone, but they’re not gone from you. All that love they had for you is part of who you are, River. Let it guide you.”

She laughed shortly, ducking away from his touch. “Well. I imagine that would be easier if they’d had any love for me in the first place.”

He almost joined her laughter. The bitter edge to her smile made him think twice, and a hard stone of dread settled in his stomach. “You think they didn’t? They were your parents.”

“So?”

“So of course they did.”

As if sensing they were skimming the boundary of a subject she seemed less than keen to pursue, she turned her gaze back to the Towers with a short sigh. “It doesn’t matter.”

He flinched at the words, watching her empty eyes roam across the dawning stars. 

“Them too,” he realised flatly. 

His hearts broke for the funny little family they’d once had, each precious memory making him ache at the thought of River looking in on all that love from the outside. Especially his. Her words on the ship had been ringing in his head since the moment he’d heard them, a painful scream of a memory. 

She knew him so very well and he’d been so terribly unsubtle from the day he’d set eyes on her that, stupidly, he’d thought it was obvious. There were all those times Amy had teased him mercilessly over just how loud his love was for her daughter. River had laughed along like she’d been in on the joke. Not at the expense of it.

“Only three people whose love could ever matter to you, and you’ve never felt it, have you?” he asked, the unsaid beginning to burn hot in his throat.

“I’ve never needed it.”

“Everyone needs it,” he argued gently. 

Her jaw flexed. “I don’t.”

“Do you honestly believe that?” He watched her mouth search uselessly for an affirmation she wasn’t quite strong enough to give. “River-”

“Doctor,” she started slowly, his name a warning as she dropped her eyes and picked at a sequin on her dress. “We really, truly don’t have to-”

“Yes we do-”

“Talk about this - no we _don’t_.”

“What are you afraid of?”

He asked as gently as he could, but it didn’t stop her glaring at him like he’d as good as smacked her across the face. “I’m not _afraid_. My love defines me. It’s what stands between who I am and who the Silence wanted me to be. It’s my freedom, it’s my - purpose-”

“Then let someone give it back.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Her voice swelled to compensate for the thickness of tears. “Well, why the hell would they?”

He scoffed, sheer frustration bulldozing centuries of restraint. “What, do you want a list? Or I can write you a book, if you’d prefer.”

“Doctor.”

“A really long book - several volumes, in fact-”

“Stop it!”

He’d never known her plead against a fight. She was yelling after him in restaurants and pinning him to a wall with fingernails in his chest and telling him to go fuck himself in tones that would send shivers up a Dalek fleet. This was crushingly worse.

“You’re wrong, River.”

She huffed softly. “Shut up-”

“River.”

He waited until she glanced up at him with heavy reluctance, stubborn and angry and broken.

“I love you.”

Her breath left her in a short burst like the words had knocked it straight out of her, whispering feebly with the last of her strength. “No you don’t-”

“Don’t you _dare_.” 

Her eyes dropped to his mouth as if waiting for him to laugh and tell her it was all a joke. His smile, patient and gentle as this face could conjure, sent tears finally spilling down her cheeks. 

He shifted off the step and knelt before her on the gravel, taking her hands in his and clutching them tightly. “River. That is what this house means. It’s what all the years ahead mean. And I will never ask anything of you other than to believe that.”

She shook her head softly. He slipped a finger under her chin to tilt her gaze to him.

“I’m not the stars,” he whispered. “And I’m sorry for whatever hand I had in making you think you wouldn’t deserve the love of the stars, in any case. Because if anyone in this universe had the power to make a sunset admire them, I know where I’d put my money.”

River’s laugh-sob lifted the ache from his hearts. He freed one of his hands to brush his fingers along her jawline, letting her push her cheek against his palm and shut her eyes.

“You didn’t need to do that,” she mumbled.

“Yes, I did. And that’s ok.” He kissed the heel of her palm gently. “It’s ok to need to hear it sometimes.”

Her bottom lip wobbled. “It’s been a really shit few weeks.”

“I know.” He ran circles into her palm with his thumb. “It’s going to get better. I promise.” He drew his jacket tighter around her shoulders, tucking the curls that the wind had teased free behind her ears. “I know nothing can hope to replace what you’ve lost by way of family, but… you have me. And whatever life you want to make here, we can do it together. If that’s what you want.”

It felt like the biggest relief in all his lives when she surged forwards, took his face in her hands and kissed him again and again, softer and messier and saltier than he’d imagined it would be but just as perfect. She held him with her hands in his hair, tugging gently at his curls as if to pull him in even closer, and the little tangle of nerves in his hearts about this face being too much or not enough fell away altogether.

She brushed his nose with hers when they parted, fogged breath mingling in the dark. “I’m so tired.”

“Then rest, love.” He kissed her on the forehead, unfurling affection boldened by long-forgotten feeling. “You’re home.”


End file.
